Simogo’s greatest triumph, perhaps, is to intensify the potency of the written word. In using its text both as narrative and as geography – and through its impressively restrained use of illustration and sound – it generates an almost unrivalled sense of place.

The action-racing genre has delivered numerous treats this generation, but not one of them has been as rewarding and relentlessly entertaining, nor as feature-packed, as this. This is Ridge Racer unbounded from the shackles of its heritage, rebuilt from the ground up into one of the most subversive, sublime street-racing games ever made.

Is 2010 about the show or the sport? It is, like the UFC itself, ready to be both. This confidence is what makes it such a complete and compelling package – a great MMA sim, a near flawless UFC sim. In a year, it’s made the kind of studious jump that took FIFA almost ten.

The action creeps up slowly, starting out like a gorgeous-looking but fairly standard shoot 'em up. However, by the middle of level two, it's pummelling you with a relentless parade of conceptual set pieces so audacious and inventive you'll laugh with delight as you gape in horror. [Sept 2004, p.94]

For a game with a premise as simple as kill the aliens before they kill you, Ziggurat's stylishly retro visuals, gleeful arcade precision and deeply interlocking mechanics trigger a chain reaction that kicks off like some interstellar combustion. Not the sound of a world ending. But the sort of bang that would make Richard Dawkins lean back, fold his arms and grin like a chimp.

For all its little tweaks, Dark Souls II is, foremost, a game made for Souls players. It is a game that asks everything of you and gives so much back, keeping its cards close to its chest, and revealing them only to those prepared to die and die again. It is made to be played for hundreds, if not thousands, of hours as you try new builds, explore PVP and experiment with covenants, all the while slowly peeling back the layers of its lore.

From Dust's not magnificent because of its breezy intricacy and rugged grasp of geology. It's magnificent because it's designed with a playful deity in mind. It's built for a god who knows that to succeed is human, &#8232;but to err – and to be creatively led astray time after time – is truly divine.

At a time when everyone wants to turn the entertainment world on its head – or at least be seen to – it proves that the entertainment itself, whichever way up it may be, is what matters most. [Christmas 2008, p.86]

A game world that keeps bettering itself, until some kind of disbelief sets in. This dazzling technical feat is mirrored by some terrifyingly fast loading times, with no in-game loading and restarts from any save point in the whole world taking around two seconds. [Feb 2005, p.72]

Halo exhibits a single-minded focus that the modern FPS, with its choreographed set-pieces and thrilling scripted sequences, largely disregards. This is a game about the arc of a perfectly thrown grenade, a game about tense games of cat-and-mouse with foes as powerful as you, a game about constant improvisation with the tools at your disposal. It's a game that always feels tactical, and a game that – even now – has the capacity to surprise.

Nintendo has clearly been experimenting with how to better exploit its system's obvious potential, and its solution is a natural, graceful implementation of 3D that complements and even improves its games, rather than feeling tacked on.

You may think you know Diablo, but you don't know it with this level of polish, from the clean brilliance of interlocking skills and classes to the sheer amount of chaos the game's comfortable with conjuring in its later dungeons. It's a testament to what money and confidence (Blizzard's own equivalent of mana and health) can do.

With the first instalment, BioWare built a universe of words – a deeply convincing multicultural sprawl you could read about without ever quite getting to touch. Here, you’re inside it from the start – and the view is often dazzling

With the focus on elaboration rather than evolution, Twilight Princess triggers more memories than it creates, yet it's still an effortless classic that towers over the gaming landscape. Ignore it at your own cost. [Christmas 2006, p.68]

A dazzling package. A singleplayer campaign crammed with set-pieces that pull the player through at breakneck speed sits alongside Spec Ops, 23 co-op missions and a MW greatest hits package, before that superlative multiplayer, which really needs no introduction. With such attractions on offer, this is a shooter that demands playing, and playing again. It is still Call Of Duty, but its execution is skilful, mostly thoughtful, and it boasts the highest of production values.

If it’s a demo, Ground Zeroes is the best demo ever; if it’s a prologue, it sets up the story so well you’ll spend the next year thirsting for revenge; and if it’s a tutorial, the systems it teaches are so intriguing that the prospect of spending an entire game with them is irresistible. Ground Zeroes is a resounding success in every respect bar its price tag, but value is relative. Fourteen hours in, we’re still learning.

Nidhogg is not about lengthy stage lists, improvable online systems, fussy control mapping or AI. Nidhogg is about the purity of two friends on a couch duking it out as Daedelus’s moody dynamic electronica frames acrobatic displays of wits and reflexes. In that sense, it has no equal.

GTAIV's modern weapons spit bullets like angry hornets until a health circle depletes; here, lives end in uncompromising fashion. For the western aficionado, it is viciously accurate; for the fan of wanton sandbox carnage, it is comically frank.